Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (19 page)

Woundy’s yard was empty but for a carter in a calico smock, gaiters and a large hat unloading wooden crates from a cart pulled by four dray horses. The contrast with the clamour of the day before could not have been more marked.

‘Baren’t no one here,’ he said to us, ‘I’m early.’

Blake took out his lock-picking tools and padded about the yard, pushing at the doors like some hopeful burglar. The one to
Woundy’s Penny Atlas
was firmly locked. The one to
Woundy’s Illustrated Weekly
, however, was not, and from within one could just hear the infernal rattle and hiss of the printing presses.

‘They run the presses through the night?’ I wondered.

‘The noise will cover our entry in any event,’ Blake said, walking in.

Despite the chatter of the presses in the background, the newspaper’s premises seemed eerily empty, as if all the people who had bustled here the day before had suddenly been spirited away. It was chill, and my breath coloured the air.

‘What now? Do we hide ourselves in his office?’ I said.

‘You think we should leap out and surprise him when he arrives?’

‘I am new to this inquiry business. How should I know?’

He did not reply. Instead he walked off towards the room with the steam presses.

‘Yes,’ I muttered, ‘why do we not instead simply indulge your appetite for loud machinery?’

Blake pushed open the double doors. He stopped suddenly. I was just behind him.

One press was working as if in a manic rage, plates and rollers rattling and slamming back and forth. But there was no paper upon it; the plates crashed together and drew apart, and crashed together and drew apart. No one fed the paper in, no one took it away, no one watched over the endless hiss and shuttle.

On the other press, its weight hindering the machine’s relentless will to motion, was draped the horribly slashed and bloodied body of Eldred Woundy, a pool of dark blood gathering, drop by drop, at its feet.

The picture of Eldred Woundy’s vast, mottled, blubbery frame is one I will not easily forget. It lay there, propped awkwardly on the press, the suety hips and belly bursting from the top of the blood-soaked trousers, the arms dangling out over the rollers, the naked upper body; ink spattered over the face, the arms, the hands; one hideous slice through its stomach where the guts, leaking blood, spilled out, and slashes all around it. The thought came to me:
This is what Wedderburn looked like
.
And Blundell
. I thought of Matty – the horror that she had seen. Men do barbarous deeds in battle, and I had seen my share of them, but finding a body in such a place, so arranged, as if each wound had been made by deliberate design – I had never seen anything like this.

Blake prowled around the body, standing as close as he could without disturbing the blood accumulating at the corpse’s feet, his face inches from its livid wounds. He stared at its eyes, he inhaled the air around its lips, he gazed at its fingers, traced over its face and chest, and then he touched the head, pressed upon the neck and pinched the back of the upper arm.

I gasped and expressed my dismay. ‘You must not!’ I said.

‘Don’t you see, William?’ he said, as earnestly as I had ever heard him, drawing out his notebook and his steel pen. ‘It is Matty’s description of Nat’s murder made flesh. I can learn from this. I can draw conclusions about what killed him and when he was placed on the press.’

‘But surely he was killed by the cut through the stomach.’

‘By no means. That could have been done after. There were blows to the head, see?’

‘I hope for his sake it was so. But does it even matter? Our duty is to inform the police and Woundy’s workers will arrive soon.’

‘All of it matters. Look, I’m sure the fingertips have been
deliberately coated in ink, just as Matty described Nat’s. The face is red and congested. The body is not yet stiff, but he is fat and it is cold, so that will have slowed down rigor mortis, and the blood has started to collect in the back and the backs of the arms. See, the skin here is purple and when I press it, it blanches white.’ He shook his head. ‘How long has he been here?’

‘Blake! We must report this! We must tell the new police.’

Blake dragged his attention from the body. ‘Yes. But we must also look in his office first. See if O’Toole’s ledger is there.’

‘Blake?’

‘When will we have another chance?’

Woundy’s office, among the honeycomb of small rooms next to the presses, was not locked. It was clear that someone had already entered it, already rifled, thoroughly and carefully, through the piles of paper and the little grey ledgers with their neat columns of numbers, and almost certainly left with what they wanted.

‘We must report this, Blake. We cannot delay any longer,’ I said at last.

‘There should be a copper in the Strand,’ he said. ‘I’ll go back to the body. Like as not this’ll go badly for us.’

‘I know.’

Within the hour there were five constables from Bow Street police station in the yard, holding back an anxious crowd of Woundy’s employees. Inside, Woundy’s most senior men had been herded up the stairs to the main office, where an inspector and a sergeant of the new police questioned each in turn. We were sitting on our own at the far end of the room. They had left us for last.

‘So you found the body.’ This, unsmilingly, from the taller of the two, Inspector Forrester, a heavy man with salt-and-pepper hair and a carefully trained moustache which had been teased on to his cheeks. His companion, Sergeant Loin, was pale and slight with a tight mouth and sharp black eyes.

Blake nodded.

‘Yesterday Mr Woundy ordered you from the premises and your friend administered a violent beating to one of his employees and laid another out on the cobbles,’ said Sergeant Loin, in an equally
unfriendly manner. ‘Today those men are both missing. You may wish to explain yourselves.’

Blake said, ‘If they are missing, we know nothing of that. They were Woundy’s nobblers, tried to knock us about. We came to ask Mr Woundy about another matter. He mistook us for investors. When we explained the mistake and asked our questions he lost his temper and ordered us out. I believe he had a reputation for being quick-tempered, but we would not know for sure as we had not met him before.’

‘The men back there say you posed as investors.’

‘We were mistaken for investors and delayed in correcting the mistake as we were keen to see Mr Woundy promptly. As for the fight, Woundy’s bruisers came at us with cudgels. Captain Avery was defending himself – and me; my health is not good.’

‘My sergeant says you’re a private inquiry agent, Mr Blake. But you were never one of us, were you?’

‘I was never a copper or a Bow Street Runner, no,’ Blake said calmly. ‘But I have my licence. Signed by Sir Richard Mayne.’

‘He has a fancy patron,’ said Loin dismissively, ‘Sir Theophilus Collinson. Loans him out to his toff friends like some doxy.’

‘That’s enough, Loin,’ said Forrester. ‘Who is your friend?’

‘I am Captain William Avery, an old associate of Mr Blake’s from India, engaged like him to look into the murder of two printers some weeks ago in Holywell Street and Seven Dials. It was about this that we came to see Mr Woundy.’

Loin looked incredulous. ‘I know of the Holywell Street murder. Nothing much to it. Case closed. I had no idea Mr Blake and his friend had taken it upon themselves to stick their noses in.’

‘Explain your business with Woundy,’ said Inspector Forrester.

Blake explained.

‘And what brought you back here so early?’ said the Inspector sceptically. ‘Something of a coincidence, you arriving at that moment.’

‘We were concerned he might intend some harm to the dead man’s widow. What with the violence of his bruisers and their quickness to attack us, and some further intelligence we received
last night, we decided to get here early to see him and let him know that if any harm came to her we would make sure the authorities would hold him responsible.’

‘The authorities being us?’ said the Inspector.

‘Yes.’

‘You look somewhat bedraggled for a professional visit.’

‘We stayed up all night keeping watch over the widow,’ I said, my temper fraying. ‘We had not had time to change. She will confirm this.’

‘The carter was already here when we arrived this morning,’ said Blake. ‘He will testify to that.’

‘He also said you took your time coming out again. Could’ve killed him in that time,’ said Loin.

‘I took a moment to examine the body,’ said Blake patiently. ‘I did not think I should get the chance again. Captain Avery then went to summon help, while I made sure the body was not disturbed. Your constable will confirm that when he arrived with Avery I showed him that the body was starting to become stiff and its colour was livid. He must have been dead for two hours at the very least before we got here, as any good medical man could confirm. And if we had killed him, do you not think there would be some traces of blood still upon us?’

‘Fancy you know something about reckoning a man’s time of death?’ Forrester said.

‘It’s an inexact science, but yes,’ said Blake.

‘Anything else?’

‘Well, it’s clear that Woundy was murdered by whoever did for Wedderburn and for Matthew Blundell, a printer murdered in his shop some six weeks ago. Don’t you agree, Sergeant Loin?’

It was evident that Sergeant Loin knew no such thing. ‘Blundell died in a fire,’ he said.

‘He was murdered first and laid on his press, then the place was burned. Witnesses say Wedderburn was also laid out, like Woundy, on his printing press, with his arms outstretched, chest and feet bare, and a hole in his stomach with the guts coming out. What else can one make of it?’

‘It seems, Mr Blake, that you know more about this than we do,’ said Forrester coldly. ‘Anything to add, Loin?’

Loin shook his head. ‘I-I did not see the bodies,’ he stuttered, looking most awkward.

‘I suspect Sergeant Loin was not party to the murder reports,’ said Blake briskly. ‘If he reads them he will find the similarities unmistakeable. You might also ask who has engaged us and why he has done so.’

‘I shall ask what questions I choose,’ snapped Forrester. Then, after a pause, ‘Well, who is your employer?’

‘Lord Allington.’

Forrester coughed incredulously. ‘Lord Allington, the evangelical peer? Can you confirm this?’

‘I can.’ Blake pulled from his coat the Viscount’s letter of introduction, which the Inspector snatched from him.

‘And his reason for employing you?’

‘He believes the new police have given up on the cases. He believes there is a dangerous madman loose on the streets and no one is seeking to stop him.’

Forrester looked as if he would happily have arrested Blake there and then, and Loin as if he wished he were somewhere else.

‘Do you have a suspect?’ said Forrester, smoothing down his moustache with his thumb and forefinger.

‘I did.’

‘Well, who is he?’

‘Eldred Woundy.’

‘Anything else you would like to apprise us of?’

‘Yes. I do not think the stabbing killed him. He took a couple of blows to the head – to stun him, I imagine. Then I think he was suffocated. See, he is grey around the mouth. And the eyes: the pupils have spread and covered the irises. That takes place when the body is denied oxygen. I have not been able to get close to the body, but I would imagine there is bruising at the back of the neck. I reckon he was choked from behind first, then laid, perhaps as he was expiring, on the press. But there’s a strange smell about the body and I don’t know what it is. I am sure, though, that the stomach was cut after
he was dead, when he was on the press. The ink on the hands and fingers, and the arrangement, were made then too. I think you’ll find no cuts on his back. Also, I think given Lord Allington’s letter and my patron’s influence, you’ll find it hard to detain us much longer.’

They did not like us, that was clear, and if we had been less well connected I have no doubt we would have been arraigned on some charge. As it was they kept us as long as they could, they repeating their questions, we repeating our answers. At length it became clear there was nothing more to be said for the time being, and so – with an ill-tempered stipulation that we remain for the time being in London and at our present lodgings – they released us.